Here Comes the Chinese Tourists

Mainland Chinese guests are heading your way. You are a hotel general manager, so what do you do? No, don't lay out the red carpet. Re-stock the items in the minibars instead.

Get rid of the green bottles of Perrier, and replace them with distilled water. Cut down on the cans of Coca-Cola, and replace them with cans of Chinese tea. And forget about Planters peanuts. Think instant cup noodles and dried fish snacks.

As Scott Neuman noted in a 2003 article titled Asian Hotels Adapt as Mainland Chinese Check In, changes have to be made to make mainland Chinese guests feel at home.

These include supplying hot water boilers so that Chinese guests can make their own tea using their own tea leaves.

While Chinese tourists certainly boost hotel occupancy rates, the problem, according to a Hong Kong hotel manager, is that they do not eat in the hotel as much. This had resulted in empty tables at hotel cafes. And since breakfast would normally account for 20% of hotels' non-room revenues, the no-show had also eaten into hotels' bottom line.

Furthermore, since Chinese tourists mainly joined tour groups where stays were often shorter, they often make little use laundry services. Those who need to wash their clothes often do it themselves and hang the clothes to dry overnight in the bathroom.

Vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Hotels Association Dan Lee was quoted as saying: "A lot of people had the attitude that big mainland tour groups, their behavior, the way they dressed, the language they used, would really disturb some of the other guests."

But Lee also hoped that Chinese guests will eventually graduate from budget-traveler status. After all, as incomes rise in China, Lee reckoned that "those people will have more to spend."

It has been four years since the article was written. Surely improvements have been made in the behaviors of Chinese tourists. Or have they not?